Tieline POTS audio sounds as good as ISDN quality at 64Kbps

Hilversum, Netherlands - No matter where the news breaks in the
Netherlands or around the world, almost one thing is certain - the
media feed will find its way to NOB Cross media facilities located
here in this "media city" near Amsterdam.

Jack Hollemans, the Network Manager for Audio and Continuity at
NOB, has been with this key broadcast organization for 40 years.
"We are the audio visual broadcast facilities company for the
Netherlands and completely independent," said Hollemans. "For radio
we have 10 broadcasters, sharing six public programmes and that
covers everything from sports to pop music to classical music and
so on."

For five years now, Hollemans and NOB have utilized Tieline
codecs to handle POTS traffic in the master control room and some
external ISDN traffic. "We have three Tieline rackmount units here
in the control center and in the morning two of the three are
usually receiving audio at the same time," said Hollemans, who
estimated that there are probably about a dozen Tieline Commander
G3 field units utilized by Dutch media for news contributions.

Once the audio has been delivered, it is routed to the proper
studios where they work on it, and then it is sent back through to
the control room where the audio is then distributed to the proper
broadcast network.

The switching operation has been in effect since Oct. 4, 1992
and Hollemans, who is set to retire in two months, has been there
from the start.

"We started with analogue highquality lines via Telco but then
in 1994 or 1995 ISDN started and we had to learn a new word called
"codec"," said Hollemans. "We have very good infrastructure here as
anywhere you go, you can order ISDN lines, but in the late 90s, the
prices started to go up so we started trying to find another
way."

For breaking news, however, there is no time to order an ISDN
line and that is where the POTS set-up comes in. "It is very useful
to have the Tieline's," said Hollemans. "We find the audio via the
Tieline's to be comparable with ISDN quality at 64 Kpbs. That is
very good quality."

Hollemans said that when the Tieline codec was first introduced
it was embraced immediately by journalists in the field.
"Journalists are more or less like artists, on Day One they said
"It's a miracle. We don't have to ask for ISDN"," said Hollemans.
"Now after five years, it is no longer a miracle but just a useful
piece of equipment to them."

One major advantage of the Tieline, according to Hollemans, is
that the journalist can use it for interviews in sources own homes
and then use their phone line to send in the story.